Interesting article I found on Tesla vs. Edison debate

[RandomPoster]

Here is an interesting article I found on the Tesla vs. Edison debate. I believe it does a good job of highlighting how some people want to idolize Tesla and demean Edison.

Nikola Tesla Wasn't God And Thomas Edison Wasn't The Devil

 

[Natural Citizen]

Tesla > Edison.

 

[JGalt]

Edison electrocuted an elephant. Tesla got a car named after him.

 

[Pogo]

Tesla > Edison.

One of the oddities of antihistorical language is that somewhere on some theater set right now a technical director is telling a stagehand to bring him an "Edison" -- by which he means an A/C cord. Considering their two positions he should be telling him to bring a "Tesla".

 

[Pogo]

Edison electrocuted an elephant. Tesla got a car named after him.

You could have said Edison electrocuted an elephant; Tesla fed his favorite pigeon from his window every day.

 

[JGalt]

Tesla > Edison.

One of the oddities of antihistorical language is that somewhere on some theater set right now a technical director is telling a stagehand to bring him an "Edison" -- by which he means an A/C cord. Considering their two positions he should be telling him to bring a "Tesla".

If it was up to Tesla, we would be needing those pesky Edison extension cords. We'd just zap that 110 VAC through the air, hopefully not hitting Granny by accident.

 

[RandomPoster]

Edison electrocuted an elephant. Tesla got a car named after him.

That elephant had killed three people in separate incidents. Thomas Edison also had nothing to do with the decision to execute it nor did he decide the means of execution.

Myth Buster - The Edison Papers

"But was Edison to blame? Did he have anything to do with the execution of Topsy? The answer is an emphatic “no.” Topsy was sentenced to death by Luna Park officials after she had killed three men over a three-month period. That she had, under the goading of her drunken handler, menaced the local police and some workmen likely also influenced amusement park officials in their decision to rid themselves of the elephant.

Luna Park management initially planned to hang Topsy. But the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals objected, claiming that this method of execution was unnecessarily cruel. To meet these objections, park officials, with the approval of the SPCA, subsequently decided to use a combination of poisoning, strangulation, and electrocution.

While Edison had nothing to do with the decision to euthanize Topsy and took no part in the proceedings, the SPCA’s understanding of electrocution as a humane means of dispatching animals was certainly influenced by experiments Edison and his associates had made at his West Orange Laboratory during the late 1880s. Edison was prompted to conduct experiments on animals after SPCA founder Henry Bergh, Jr., contacted him to ask whether electrocution might provide a humane way of killing unwanted animals. During these experiments, Edison and his assistants electrocuted a number of animals, chiefly dogs provided by the SPCA.

These experiments at Edison’s West Orange Laboratory did convince SPCA officials that electrocution was a more humane and efficient way of euthanizing animals than either drowning (in the case of dogs) or hanging (in the case of other animals). Edison associates had also used the results of this laboratory research during the Battle of the Currents (1886-1892) to demonstrate that AC was more dangerous than DC. These experiments were also undertaken at the behest of a commission established by the State of New York to find a more humane method of executing criminals and led to the institution of the electric chair as a common method of execution in the United States. However, the efforts by Edison and his company to disparage the Westinghouse system failed as a competitive strategy because AC proved to be more efficient for transmitting electricity over large distances.

Once Luna Park officials had decided that electrocution would be used on Topsy, they required the cooperation of the local electric power company— the Edison Electric Illuminating Co. of Brooklyn, which under the supervision of electrician P. D. Sharkey provided technical assistance and 6,600 volts of power relayed from new General Electric AC generators in nearby Bay Ridge. Like so many local illuminating companies across the United States, the Brooklyn company used the Edison name because it originally employed the Edison system of electric power generation under license from the Edison Electric Light Co. of New York. In most cases, Edison had no personal role in the formation or direction of these companies. In 1903, he played no role in the direction of the Edison Electric Illuminating Co. of Brooklyn, which in any case was acting at the behest of officials at Luna Park in conjunction with the SPCA.

Edison is not mentioned in any of the numerous contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the killing of Topsy. Nor is there any evidence that officials of Luna Park, the SPCA, or the Brooklyn Illuminating Co. consulted him on the case. It is also unlikely that he was personally involved in producing the film “Electrocuting an Elephant,” even though the title bears his name. Although he was the president of the Edison Manufacturing Co., which, among other things, oversaw the film company, day-to-day operations were in the hands of the vice president and general manager William E. Gilmore."

 

[RandomPoster]

Here is another article on Tesla:

10 Uncomfortable Truths About Nikola Tesla - Listverse

Absurd Tesla Claims

"Thanks to the Tesla revival, every absurd claim he made to newspapers back in the day is now being repeated as fact. The truth is that Tesla made many claims so far out of left field that they would destroy a scientist’s credibility even today, often with no evidence or results to back them up. But if Tesla was crazy, he was crazy like a fox. Oftentimes, his claims were reported shortly before the historical experiments of other scientists.

For example, when Marconi was gearing up for some important radio signal tests, Tesla told the media that he had already received radio transmissions that he believed were from Mars. With his technology, he claimed, we would soon be able to communicate with other planets almost instantaneously. Other projects he claimed to be working on included a torpedo that could be recalled even after being fired and a powerful death ray.

As bizarre as these claims sounded, they gave the impression that Tesla was light-years ahead of everyone else. But if the general public was impressed, the scientific community was decidedly not, regarding Tesla as being mostly full of hot air. While this is an overreaction—Tesla certainly did contribute to our body of scientific knowledge—the plausibility of many of Tesla’s inventions is greatly exaggerated."

The Wardenclyffe Tower fiasco

"Tesla’s most ambitious project—and his biggest failure—was Wardenclyffe Tower. He envisioned a gigantic tower that could transmit incredibly powerful amounts of electricity and wireless communication all around the globe. He asked for $1 million to fund the project, which is close to $30 million in today’s money. However, the only major backer he secured was J.P. Morgan, who offered him $150,000 dollars, or about $4 million now. Morgan also wanted a stake in Tesla’s patents, which indicates that he might not have had much faith in his investment.

Once Tesla had his funding, he went straight to work. He purchased plots of land and hired laborers to build his tower, which consisted of 16 steel supports that went hundreds of feet into the Earth. He intended to use the Earth itself as a conductor and believed that the supports from his tower would “grip the Earth” and “make it quiver” even at those relatively shallow depths.

While many people think the structure failed because Tesla didn’t receive the proper funding, he apparently completed the plans outlined in his patent and produced a transmitter. The problem was that it didn’t work. Tesla was desperate to fix it and begged Morgan for more money, but Morgan refused, disappointed in the initial results.

Modern-day experts who have studied the Wardenclyffe Tower have come away with more questions than answers. They couldn’t figure out how Tesla’s device was supposed to accomplish its intended purposes, and the same patent that proposed the plan to use the Earth as a conductor contained another plan to shoot the energy into the Earth’s ionosphere. They aren’t sure which method he intended to use or even which one he actually tested. It’s likely that no money in the world would have resulted in the finished product when its designer didn’t even have a clear vision of his immense project. "